This tragic love story was written around the first century CE and is often (probably mistakenly) attributed to the Greek historian Plutarch. It comes from a set of five tales that deal with some of the darker issues surrounding love such as, as in this story, jealousy, revenge and death.

“At Haliartus, in Boeotia, there was a girl of remarkable beauty, named Aristocleia, the daughter of Theophanes. She was wooed by Strato of Orchomenus and Callisthenes of Haliartus. Strato was the richer and was rather the more violently in love with the maiden; for he had seen her in Lebadeia bathing at the fountain called HercynÃª in preparation for carrying a basket in a sacred procession in honour of Zeus the King. But Callisthenes had the advantage, for he was a blood-relation of the girl.